...two adults and... wow this gets complicated: One employed kid, one 4th year college kid, one Marine, and one college freshman.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Bidding on the Brain

Nope, not bidding yet, but definitely getting into the mindset. Four years is a long time to be at Post. Too long for this family. Settling in, feeling comfortable, both good things. Getting bored (ask my husband), not a good thing.

Will we make our last 18 months count? We're going to try. Listen to us... "last 18 months." For those on 2 year tours, 18 months IS the tour. For those on 3 year tours, 18 months is only 1/2 way. For us, we're starting the countdown. What can we do in 18 months? Well, lots of stuff. There are plenty of places in Jordan we have yet to experience. An overnight in Wadi Rum for one. I'm trying to build a list and schedule out 12 places to go, one a ~month (skipping R&R month and a few others) and I'm open to suggestions. It's a challenge because there are monthly trips with my job (I try to avoid some of them) and really, on the weekends usually our big goal is to do nothing but hang out at home. Boring for the kids, awesome for the adults.

Today the boys are off to paintball with friends. There's a newish place called Blu Tactical https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blu-Tactical/132344096967102 that is way closer than Mountain Breeze (which is having great deals right now, no doubt due to the increase in much closer and presumably better paintball places). They'll have fun. I'd wanted to go to IKEA since it's in the general area, but apparently they're carpooling and taking my car which leaves me at home to use my new Little Green Machine on the curtains. I lead a charmed life some days. I may also work on crochet animal parts.

Rebecca's community service project for this year is to make animals for a local orphanage, so I'm pitching in to help figure out the directions and get a few put together as guides. I'm usually pretty quick, but it's taking me at least an hour for each part, which is crazy long. Right now I'm making bodies and she's making legs as all the patterns have the same base parts.

Or maybe I'll just spend the day scrapping last summer's trips. If I can't plan for the future just yet and I decide cleaning curtains isn't really going to entertain me, I'll just live in the past for a few hours and review some of the great trips we took last year.

The GlobeHoppers

For those wondering, Baghdad is 7 hours ahead of EDT.

We're a Foreign Service family currently posted to Frankfurt, Germany after having spent 2 years in Manila, Philippines, 1 year in Lome', Togo (no, not Tonga), 3 years in Chennai, India, 3 years in Virginia, and 4 years in Amman, Jordan. We'll spend 3 years in Germany to graduate the boys from high school, and our next post is Baghdad 2019!

I am a former Army brat (lived in Belgium, Zaire, Algeria, Niger, visited too many places to list), now Foreign Service spouse. I tag along where ever Ian takes us and try to keep the family sane. Between 1996 when we got married and 2003 when we moved to Manila we lived in Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Florida, and visited several other states.

Back to London again - November 2015 (grandma came too for the Dr. Who Festival)

South Ari Atoll, Maldives - May 20th Anniversary Trip 2016

Copenhagen, Denmark - March 2017

Antananarivo, Madagascar - March 2017

Johannesburg & Pretoria SA - March 2017

Berlin - May 21st Anniversary Trip 2017

Copenhagen (again) - October 2017 (with a lunch in Sweden)

Bruges - January 2018 (Christmas present!)

Wroclaw, Poland - October 2018

Copenhagen (again) - March 2019 (with an escape room in Sweden)

Rebecca traveled to Oman with chorus (2013), Ethiopia with Week Without Walls (WWW 2014), Qatar with swimming (2014) and volleyball (2015), and Kuwait with basketball (2016). She also went to Amsterdam in 2017 for a weekend.

Rebecca and Nicholas traveled through Vietnam on WWW 2015 and Thailand for WWW 2016.

Katherine went to Kuwait with volleyball (2014) and France with WWW 2014, and did a semester abroad in Cork, Ireland in 2016. She's was in Dublin for her internship summer 2017.

Jonathon went to Kuwait with Academic Games (2015) and had a school trip to Berlin (2016). He had a week of canoeing in Sweden in summer 2017, and a week of snowboarding in Austria in 2018.

Ian has been to Ethiopia (2006), Benin (2006), South Korea (2004), Liberia (2016), Central African Republic (2016), Cameroon (2016), Algeria (2017), Morocco (2017), Tunisia (2017), Turkmenistan (2017), Suriname (2018), Brunei (2018), Auckland NZ (2018). He also covers Sanaa and Tripoli (no travel there), Copenhagen and Accra. Ian aided after the Mumbai Massacre (2008), and also went to Bangalore and Hyderabad in India. A life goal for him is to serve in Russia or Canada, or really any place that has a decent hockey scene. He's happy that Frankfurt has the local Loewen team!